Breaking: Biden Exits Presidential Race
Episode Stats
Length
1 hour and 31 minutes
Words per Minute
189.89204
Summary
Joe Biden announces that he will not be running for re-election in 2020, raising a bunch of questions about the future of the Democratic presidential campaign. What will Biden do now that he's decided not to run again?
Transcript
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Is politics ever going to allow us to have a peaceful Sunday afternoon again? I'm not so sure.
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Breaking news, Joe Biden has dropped out of the 2024 presidential race.
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Now, there are about a billion questions that go along with that. Will he remain president?
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Who will the nominee be? Will Biden endorse a nominee? What happens now? How do we process
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this information? We will get through all of it. But the big headline is Biden is out of the race.
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He informed everyone through an image of a letter posted on his personal letterhead.
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Notice, not White House letterhead, personal letterhead, Joseph R. Biden Jr. on X.
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Now, just the method of making this news raises a lot of eyebrows.
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We have not seen Joe Biden for a little while now. Don't forget, Joe Biden is quarantining
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ostensibly because he has a case of COVID-19. The president, who said that he's vigorous,
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he can withstand all the challenges. He's been saying now for weeks and weeks and months and
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months and years and years that he is going to run for reelection. All of a sudden, he disappears
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because he came down with a mild cold. So we haven't seen from Biden. We haven't heard from Biden.
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Does Joe Biden even know that he tweeted out his dropping out of the race? I'm only half joking
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when I ask that. Well, here's what he said. My fellow Americans, over the past three and a half
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years, we have made great progress as a nation. Today, America has the strongest economy in the
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world. We've made historic investments in rebuilding our nation and lowering prescription
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drug costs for seniors and an expanding affordable health care to a record number of Americans.
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Well, I won't take issue with Biden's lies and exaggerations here because he half the time
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probably doesn't even know he's lying anymore. And that's not really the point. He's opening up with
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all of his supposed accomplishments, but let's get to the meat of it. We have provided critically
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needed care to a million veterans exposed to toxic substances, passed the first gun safety law in 30
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years, appointed the first African-American woman to the Supreme Court, and passed the most significant
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climate legislation in the history of the world. America's never been better positioned to lead than we
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are today. Yeah, sure, man. Who are you trying to convince, Joe? I know none of this could have
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been done without you, the American people. Together, we overcame a once-in-a-century pandemic
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and the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. Uh-huh, here we go. Again and again,
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all the excuses as to why things aren't good right now, but you have to believe that they're good
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because Joe Biden tells you so. We've protected and preserved our democracy, capital D. He's starting to
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pick up the Trump tick of capitalizing random words. We've revitalized and strengthened our
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alliances around the world. It's been the greatest honor of my life to serve as your president.
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Here we go. And while it has been my intention to seek re-election, I believe it is in the best
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interest of my party and the country for me to stand down and focus solely on fulfilling my duties
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as president for the remainder of my term. Hold on. Hold on.
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Now, you're telling me that you cannot run for re-election. You're telling me, Joe Biden,
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that you are now too frail, too senile, too far gone with dementia to run for re-election,
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but you're going to continue to serve as president? It's a very strange line there.
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I believe it's in the best interest of my party. I intended to seek re-election. I want to seek
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re-election, but I can't do it. So now I'm going to focus solely on fulfilling my duties as president
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for the remainder of the term. Call me naive. I thought it was harder to be president than to
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run for president. I thought it was harder to lead the United States, the hegemonic superpower in the
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world, maintain the world order, make sure that our economy is still churning. Biden hasn't done
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a good job of that. Protect our national security. Biden hasn't done a good job of that. Run the
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whole country. I thought that was harder than just campaigning. Biden doesn't even really need
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to campaign, as we saw in 2020 when he barely did. So how is it that Joe Biden has enough vigor,
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energy, and mental acuity to remain the president for the rest of July, August, September, October,
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November? Don't forget the elections in November, but he's still going to be president through
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December and January. This guy who is so senile that he can't run for re-election is going to
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remain president for seven more months while we face the first major war in Europe since World War II,
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while we face increasing threats from China on Taiwan, on US interests in Taiwan.
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As we face the outbreak of war in the Middle East, there had been relative peace in the Middle East
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under President Trump, who had the historic Abraham Accord signed.
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Then you have a major outbreak of war in the Middle East, a war not just between Israel and Gaza,
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but also involving Iran, also involving all sorts of regional interests.
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And you're telling me that for seven more months, the better part of a year, this guy who wants
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desperately to run for president, as he tells you, he's like, I really, really want to run for
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re-election. But I'm just not up to the task. But I can be your president for more than half a year.
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Biden's going to have to answer for that. But he's not going to answer right now because he's
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making his declaration via letter posted on Twitter, posted on X. He addresses this.
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He says, I will speak to the nation, capital N nation. Again, weird capitalization here.
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I will speak to the nation later this week in more detail about my decision.
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For now, let me express my deepest gratitude to all those who have worked so hard to see me re-elected.
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I want to thank Vice President Kamala Harris for being an extraordinary partner in all this work.
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And let me express my heartfelt appreciation to the American people for the faith and trust you
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have placed in me. I believe today what I always have. There is nothing America can't do.
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When we do it together, we just have to remember we're the United States of America, Joe Biden.
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So this letter reads to me like a much less eloquent and less poignant version of the letter that
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Ronald Reagan wrote to America when he was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease.
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That was a beautiful letter saying, America's best days lie ahead of us. And it's the honor of my life.
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And I move into the sunset of my life. The difference, though, is when Ronald Reagan wrote that letter,
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he was already out of office. He was retiring from public life entirely.
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And he was acknowledging that he was losing his mental faculties. Biden, writing his own less
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eloquent version of that letter, is promising to remain president for another seven months. Very
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scary stuff. And we won't hear from him until later this week. What on earth could justify that?
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We haven't seen an incumbent not run for re-election since, I guess it would be Lyndon
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Johnson, right? And Lyndon Johnson didn't say, I will not seek nor will I accept my party's
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nomination for president because he was losing his mind. The reason he dropped out of that race was
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because the Vietnam War was damaging his poll numbers too much and he couldn't win.
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And he came out, right? He said, look, I'm just, I'll finish my term. But he didn't post a letter
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on Twitter, that's for sure. He came out and said it in his own voice on TV.
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What could possibly justify Biden waiting until the end of this week to explain his decision?
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Is he really going to tell us this is about COVID? The reason that the president after years of
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saying, I will run for re-election, just including up to just days ago, is now making a 180 and saying
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he won't run for re-election, but he's not going to talk to anybody and nobody can see him and nobody
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can hear from him directly because he has a mild cold that everyone has had probably several times
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over the last four years. I don't buy that. That is bogus. The reason that Biden can't address the
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nation until later this week, it can only be one of two things. Either he's just not up to it.
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The guy that we saw at that disastrous debate, the guy who could barely speak,
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is the guy that we're looking at now and he's just not able to do it. Or he doesn't want to.
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We know that for weeks now, since that disastrous debate on June 27th, I think it was,
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there have been calls, increasing calls in the Democrat Party for Biden to drop out.
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And he's resisted them. He says, no, I'm the man. I'm getting the job done. It's me.
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And then you saw, it wasn't just a random politician or two. Then it was George Clooney
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who just headlined the biggest fundraiser in Democratic Party history, raised something like
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$28 million for the Democrats and specifically for Joe Biden. And Clooney came out and at least
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was said to have authored an op-ed in the New York Times. I'm not convinced that George Clooney can
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read or write, but his name was right there in the byline guest essay in the New York Times.
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George Clooney, I love Joe Biden, but we need a new nominee. And there have been rumors now for
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at least several days that big top head honchos in the Democratic Party have been calling for Joe
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to step down. Barack Obama has been reported to be pushing this. Chuck Schumer, the Senate majority
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leader has been reported to have turned on Biden. And then when reporters like Jonathan Carl from ABC
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approached Schumer's office about the Schumer's office, Schumer's office didn't even deny it.
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Pelosi, Hakeem Jeffries, everybody, everybody in the Democratic establishment
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has turned on Biden in recent days. Still, if you watched the Michael Knowles show on Thursday or
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Friday, I said, look, obviously they're creating the conditions according to which Biden basically can't
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keep running. They're playing a game of chicken. But I would have bet a small amount of money
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that Biden was going to stick it out, that Biden was going to tell them all to pound sand and stay
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in the race. It takes a big man. It takes a big, handsome, swarthy man to admit that he was wrong,
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except the bizarre way that Biden has made this announcement. It makes you wonder,
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was I wrong? Does Biden know this has happened yet?
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All we know about this decision is what we see posted on Twitter. And we know for a fact,
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Joe Biden doesn't write his own tweets. Trump writes his own tweets and X posts and truth social
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posts. And we know that Trump is glued to that phone. And we know just as surely that Biden does
00:11:03.260
not. So we have this letter. And I mentioned earlier, the letter is written on personal letterhead.
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It's not written on White House letterhead. Why is that? I think the reason for that is because
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Biden is speaking as a candidate for president, not as the president. He's trying to walk this line
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whereby he will not run for reelection, but continue to serve out his full term. This man does not want
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to go down in history as not even having been able to fulfill a full term. If this were on White House
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letterhead, it would drive home the point even more. And I think it's already in people's minds.
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How can the guy be so bad off that he can't run, but he's well enough to continue to serve?
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So that's the breaking news. There is more breaking news on top of that,
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which is that Biden has endorsed Kamala Harris. Now, what does that mean? What does that mean
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for the nominating fight that will now take place over the course of, I don't know, a month?
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Really less than a month, right? The Democratic National Convention kicks off, I think it's August
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18th. It's middle to end of August. But there's a wrinkle in that too, because there are state
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deadlines to get on the ballot. So the parties need to tell certain states, notably Ohio, who the
00:12:26.700
nominee is before the Democratic National Convention. The Democrats have pushed their convention so far
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in the year that they are now running into legal problems for ballot access.
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So back when Biden was the ostensible nominee, there was talk of virtually nominating Biden
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before the DNC. And so the DNC would just be a show. It would just be theatrics. You'd go there and
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it would be rather undemocratic. There would be no question about where the delegates would go.
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There would be no question about fights on the floor. It just would be, Biden would already be
00:13:02.860
the nominee before the convention. What will the Democrats do now? Will they follow Joe Biden
00:13:09.440
and make Kamala Harris their nominee for 2024? And then will they virtually nominate her before
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the DNC? So there's not even an opportunity for an open convention, not even an opportunity for a
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floor flight? That sounds like Joe Biden now, for a floor fight.
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Peter Piper pecked a pick of pickled peppers. My fellow Democrats, writes Joe Biden,
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I have decided not to accept the nomination and to focus all my energies on my duties as president
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for the remainder of my term. My very first decision as the party nominee in 2020 was to
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pick Kamala Harris as my vice president, and it's been the best decision I've made. Today,
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I want to offer my full support and endorsement for Kamala to be the nominee of our party this year.
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Democrats, it's time to come together and beat Trump. Let's do this.
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Joe obviously didn't write this. I would be real surprised if he felt this. I strongly suspect Joe
00:14:07.160
Biden detests Kamala Harris because Kamala Harris ran against him in 2020, and pretty much her entire
00:14:13.360
campaign was calling Joe Biden a racist. During the brief appearance of Kamala Harris in the 2020
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Democratic primaries, Kamala leveled a really nasty attack at Joe Biden, who's a nasty man. So
00:14:26.960
you love to see it happen. But she leveled this nasty attack. She said, Joe Biden opposed busing.
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Little black girls who wanted to go to good schools had to get on a bus and go cross town,
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and Joe Biden opposed that. And Joe, I was one of those little girls. You racist. You racist Joe Biden.
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And Biden fended off the attack, and then Kamala Harris got out. So then this raises another
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question. Hold on. Kamala Harris is now going to be, if Joe Biden has this way, the presidential
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nominee of the Democratic Party without ever having received a single vote while running in a Democrat
00:15:09.120
primary. Kamala Harris dropped out of the 2020 race before the primaries. That's how poorly she ran.
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Now, she still received some votes. I looked this up because I suppose she was already on the ballot
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in at least a few places. So how many votes did Kamala Harris receive in the 2020 Democrat primary?
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She'd already dropped out before the primary. 844. To be clear, that's not 844 delegates.
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844 delegates to go to the convention to try to do it. No, no, no. It's 844 votes, period.
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I may very well have received more votes in presidential elections than Kamala Harris did in
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2020. I'm not sure. I don't want to presume that people wrote me in, but 844 is nobody. Do you know
00:16:04.100
who got more votes than Kamala Harris in the 2020 Democratic primaries? Julian Castro. Remember him?
00:16:13.120
Probably not. Marianne Williamson, the woo-woo new age guru gal. Cory Booker.
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John Delaney. You remember John Delaney? No, of course you don't. Andrew Yang, Michael Bennett,
00:16:26.180
Deval Patrick, Tom Stott. Look at all these guys. Hold on. I want to actually, I want to issue a
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correction. That's not fair. Those guys did not drop out before the primary. They stayed in the
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primary. So now I can't be certain that they got more votes because you have to stay into the
00:16:44.480
primaries to even count how many delegates you're going to get. So no delegates.
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Never got a single vote while she was running in a primary. Now, all of a sudden, she's going to be
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the nominee. The woman who only slightly edged out Steve Bullock for just raw votes in the primary
00:17:05.320
came in just a little bit ahead of Joe Sestak, Wayne Messam, and Beto O'Rourke. She's going to be
00:17:14.140
the nominee for president. Doesn't seem very democratic, does it?
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Then on top of that, you have to wonder if the delegates are going to follow Biden. So
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just from a nuts and bolts political operations perspective, now that Biden has dropped out of
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the race, all of Biden's delegates, which is to say all the delegates, are no longer bound to him.
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They can follow his lead and vote for Kamala Harris, but they don't have to. They're not bound to follow
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the lead of the person that he endorses. So probably many of them would, probably the vast majority of
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them would go with Kamala Harris because they like Joe and for party unity or for whatever,
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but they don't have to. So is this going to go to the convention and we're going to have a floor fight?
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I don't know. I don't know. Or they might virtually nominate her. Is Joe Biden going to give us any
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guidance on this? Maybe he'll give us some guidance if he addresses the nation later this week,
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if he's up to it, if he knows that he dropped out. President Trump has responded. We have President
00:18:24.740
Trump's Truth Social post. Crooked Joe Biden was not fit to run for president and is certainly not
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fit to serve and never was. He only attained the position of president by lies, fake news,
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and not leaving his basement. All those around him, including his doctor and the media,
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knew that he wasn't capable of being president, and he wasn't. And now look what he's done to our
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country with millions of people coming across our border, totally unchecked and unvetted, many from
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prisons, mental institutions, and record numbers of terrorists. We will suffer greatly because of
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his presidency, but we will remedy the damage he has done very quickly. Make America great again.
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This is a great post, very Trumpy. You probably could have closed your eyes and just, if I said,
00:19:10.300
guess what Trump said in response to Biden's dropping out, you could have composed something
00:19:14.300
similar to this post. But what's so important about it is that first part.
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He is not fit to serve. He never was. He only attained the position of president by lies,
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fake news, and not leaving his basement. As I was driving over to the studio as the news broke,
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I tuned in to some of the establishment network news coverage. I tried to do that as little as
00:19:39.120
I possibly can, but I thought, all right, let's see how the liberal establishment hacks are covering
00:19:44.020
this. And what I heard, oh my goodness, CBS News brought on a guest. And all of a sudden,
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you've been hearing from the establishment that it's been trying to kick Joe out ever since Joe
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failed at the debate and made them look all foolish and made them look like the liars that they are for
00:19:58.440
covering up for his obvious senility by pretending it was the return of a childhood stutter. And it was
00:20:02.980
a nasty fight. But now that Joe dropped out and he did what they wanted, now it's all sunshine and
00:20:08.300
roses again. So one of the guests they brought on to give his expert analysis, some rando, I have no
00:20:14.420
idea who it was. He said, this is a great personal sacrifice from Joe Biden. This dropping out of the
00:20:20.980
race is an act of great personal sacrifice. I suppose that's true if Biden did it willingly,
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if he even knows that he did it. But it's not a sacrifice that he did willingly. He did everything
00:20:32.740
he possibly could to hold on to that nomination in 2024. It was only after weeks of pretty much
00:20:39.980
every Democrat in the country, something like three dozen lawmakers, among others, coming out
00:20:46.420
against him and a failed assassination attempt against his rival that he finally got out of the
00:20:52.000
race. They tried everything, okay? They tried every single thing that they possibly could to hold on to
00:20:56.300
power. Then and only then did he say, okay, I'm not going to run again. And this guy, this hack,
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CBS News said, he's ending his presidency with a great personal sacrifice just as he began it with
00:21:08.800
a great personal sacrifice. Because Joe Biden said he didn't want to run in 2020. He only did it,
00:21:14.140
he came out of retirement because Donald Trump called Nazis fine people at Charlottesville,
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which was a total lie as even Snopes and other liberal outlets now admit. And so he did,
00:21:24.920
he had to do it. It was a great personal sacrifice. Oh, that's old Joe, you know? Just what a guy.
00:21:31.560
It's a gold, old sacrifice Joe, that's what they called him. Joe Biden, who had been running for
00:21:37.260
president since 1988. Joe Biden, who was elected to the Senate before he was old enough to serve in
00:21:43.060
the US Senate. Joe Biden, who has been salivating at the prospect of being the president of the United
00:21:47.280
States since he was in the womb. Oh yeah, no, he ran this time. It was just a, it was a real personal
00:21:52.600
sacrifice for him. Give me a break. What are you talking about? The guy ran unsuccessfully multiple
00:21:59.900
times. Obama picked him to be the VP. He wanted to run in 16. Hillary edged him out. He didn't run.
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And then he runs in 2020 and he, and he fails. I do think there is some poetry to the way that,
00:22:15.980
that Biden's campaign is ending. It's, it's ending with him having never accomplished anything
00:22:21.720
because Joe Biden has never been a conviction politician. I always, it's, it is overstated that
00:22:28.620
there's two kinds of people in this world, but it's, it's a helpful way to look at politics.
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There are two kinds of politicians, conviction politicians, politicians who have a political
00:22:35.940
vision, who believe in something, who want to effect some kind of change in the political order
00:22:41.940
and convenience politicians, the politicians who don't really believe anything. They're empty
00:22:46.980
suits. They just want to have a library named after them. Maybe, maybe get a post office named
00:22:50.400
after them and get to sit in the Oval Office and be the thing. The former want to do something.
00:22:56.220
The latter want to be something. And Biden, whether you like Biden or whether you hate Biden,
00:23:01.940
I think you have to admit has always been the latter. He's flipped his position on just about every,
00:23:07.300
everything he's ever even purported to believe. He he's, he's just a guy who really wanted to be
00:23:13.320
the president. And so he's devoted now the majority of his life to national politics.
00:23:20.160
The guy got his first political job, a local political job, the Newcastle County Council in 1970.
00:23:27.620
Very quickly, I think he's elected to the U S Senate in 1972. He remained in the Senate until 2009
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when he became the vice president, remained the vice president. I think I remember the
00:23:39.400
chronology of Joe Biden's political career much better than he does. He remained the vice president
00:23:43.260
until 2016. He gets out, lays low for four years and runs for president. So he's been almost,
00:23:49.540
thank you, sir. Producers are running in all sorts of notes and breaking information,
00:23:57.260
which I'll ignore for right now while I continue on my rant. He was president until,
00:24:01.000
or rather he ran for president in 2020. So he's been in it his whole life and he's never pointed
00:24:06.100
to the point to the accomplishment. What's the thing he did? Nothing. It was all just a waste of
00:24:11.660
time. And now the indignity, he's got to go out. He's going to try to claw onto power to at least
00:24:18.060
finish out his, his term, his one term. And he's got to go out and he's going to pick this other gal
00:24:22.860
who also doesn't believe in anything, Kamala Harris. But he has no way of, of insisting the party
00:24:30.020
goes along with it. And as of now, none of us has any reason to believe that he actually is
00:24:36.720
personally acquiescing to dropping out. Don't forget July 5th, we have a clear declaration
00:24:43.320
from Joe Biden that he is staying in this race.
00:24:52.020
You voted for me to be your nominee. No one else. You, the votes, the voters did that.
00:24:59.100
And despite, despite that some folks don't seem to care who you voted for, well, guess what?
00:25:05.560
They're trying to push me out of the race. Well, let me say this clearly as I can. I'm staying in
00:25:11.780
the race. I'll beat Donald Trump. I will beat him again in 2020. Let me say this as clearly as I can.
00:25:21.020
And you can trust this statement just as much as you can trust anything I've ever said.
00:25:24.800
I am staying in this race. Five seconds later. No, I'm not. Sorry. I lied to you again.
00:25:32.800
He sits down two weeks ago with George Stephanopoulos, the establishment propagandist
00:25:38.880
of establishment propagandists, a man who plays an objective news anchor on ABC News,
00:25:43.980
but who of course was the head of Bill Clinton's war room in the White House,
00:25:47.040
the White House communications director, a Democrat propagandist for his whole career.
00:25:50.720
He sits down, Stephanopoulos voicing the concerns and anxieties of the liberal
00:25:56.000
established and saying, hey man, you got to get out. Biden again, defiant.
00:26:01.600
If you can be convinced that you cannot defeat Donald Trump, will you stand down?
00:26:09.220
With the fans of, unless the Lord Almighty comes out and tells me that I might do that.
00:26:13.380
Well, I mean, on a more practical level, Washington Post just reported in the last hour
00:26:18.040
that Senator Mark Warner is assembling a group of senators together to try and convince you to stand
00:26:25.660
Well, Mark is a good man. We've never had that. He also tried to get the nomination too.
00:26:31.580
Mark's not. Mark and I have a different perspective. I respect him.
00:26:35.940
And if Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries and Nancy Pelosi come down and say,
00:26:42.560
we're worried that if you stay in the race, we're going to lose the House and the Senate,
00:26:48.560
I go into detail with them. I've spoken to all of them in detail, including Jim Clyburn.
00:26:54.580
Every one of them, they all said I should stay in the race.
00:26:58.440
They've all said I should stay in the race publicly, even though privately they were undermining
00:27:03.140
me the whole time. And now maybe I'm acquiescing. The final straw or the penultimate straw was when
00:27:08.940
Biden did an interview with BET. And here was the first time that Biden started to open up,
00:27:16.840
crack the door just a little bit to an off ramp.
00:27:23.320
Is there anything that you would look to, you personally, not anybody else, not other pundits,
00:27:28.540
not even perhaps family members, that you would look to to say, if I see that, I will re-evaluate?
00:27:36.980
If there had some medical condition that emerged, if somebody, if the doctors came to me and said,
00:27:41.140
you got this problem, that problem. But I made a serious mistake in the whole debate.
00:27:47.540
And, uh, and look, when I originally ran, you may remember it, I said I was going to be a transitional
00:27:53.700
candidate. And I thought that I'd be able to move from this, just pass it on to someone else.
00:27:59.680
But I didn't anticipate things getting so, so, so divided. And quite frankly, I think
00:28:06.760
the only thing age brings a little bit of wisdom. And I think I've demonstrated that I know how to
00:28:13.200
get things done for the country, in spite of the fact that we're told we couldn't get it done.
00:28:18.740
But there's more to do. And I'm reluctant to walk away from that.
00:28:21.960
There's more to do. I'm reluctant to walk away from this. Look, I said I would be a transitional
00:28:26.440
candidate, right? That's, that's opening the door. But there's more to do. I didn't know how divided
00:28:30.820
it would be. It got divided under my watch. Oopsie daisy. But, but it's so divided now that I can't
00:28:36.040
walk away. I'm reluctant to walk, but never reluctant to walk away. Not, I'm not going to walk away.
00:28:39.920
It's, I'm reluctant. I don't, if I were diagnosed with a medical condition, then conveniently five
00:28:45.320
seconds later, they muzzle Biden with chloroform and say, yeah, he's got COVID. Yeah. Anyway,
00:28:50.600
we're going to take him to a row with beach. Nobody look for him. We, he's okay. He's, he's
00:28:54.680
quarantining. Just watch his Twitter account. Then very convenient timing. And then he comes out and
00:29:02.460
endorses Kamala Harris. So I have joining me now, Charlie Spearing, author of Amateur Hour,
00:29:08.280
Kamala Harris in the White House, a man who picked a really, I was going to say really great subject
00:29:15.740
for a book. Actually, it's a really awful subject for a book, but I, I hope and expect that he's now
00:29:20.480
going to make a lot of money because all of a sudden this woman really could end up in the White
00:29:25.140
House. Charlie, thank you for coming on. You bet, Michael. Thanks for having me. What a, what an
00:29:30.240
afternoon. So is Kamala actually going to get the nomination? Biden endorses her. He has no way of
00:29:38.300
forcing his delegates to go along with it. Are we really going to end up with this lady as the
00:29:43.080
democratic nominee? Well, it's interesting that you haven't really heard a resounding
00:29:48.480
declaration of support around Kamala Harris, even though I do suspect that she will be the ultimate
00:29:53.720
nominee right now. You're going to have a lot of donors fighting behind the scenes, especially the
00:29:59.260
ones that don't want to see Kamala Harris become the head of the democratic party. There's, there
00:30:03.840
will be a little, a few conversations behind the scenes, trying to make, trying to open up the
00:30:09.380
process to allow another candidate to come in. But from the very beginning, it's the, it's the way
00:30:14.540
this has been set up. This is why Joe Biden was running for reelection in the first place, because
00:30:19.180
Kamala Harris was not ready to run. Kamala Harris wasn't popular. She wasn't resonating with voters.
00:30:24.100
Democrats don't necessarily all rally around her. So this is the reason why he was running for
00:30:29.040
reelection in the first place. And now they're stuck with the ultimate doom scenario. Well, we will,
00:30:34.140
we will see what we will be unburdened by what has been or whatever that word salad that Kamala
00:30:39.040
frequently repeats. Uh, we, we will see that. Of course, Kamala has a big advantage here, which is
00:30:44.900
that she's already part of the ticket. She's already part of the campaign apparatus. So presumably it
00:30:50.020
would be easier for her than for say a Gavin Newsom or a Michelle Obama, as some Democrats are
00:30:55.860
fantasizing about, uh, to move into that, to that position. Exactly. So exactly. Take a look at,
00:31:02.160
uh, Obama. He's a long time Kamala Harris supporter. So I fully expect him to back Kamala Harris.
00:31:07.520
The Clintons just came out with a tweet. They endorsed Kamala Harris. So she's already on the
00:31:11.740
fast track to seizing, seizing the mantle here. Do you think the Democrats are going to push back at
00:31:16.280
all given that they're, they're supposedly the democratic party? And yet Kamala Harris has never
00:31:22.420
received a single vote, uh, much less a, uh, a delegate while she was running in a Democrat
00:31:29.360
primary, not one vote. Yes. I'm adding you'll see some grumbling. There may be a movement within
00:31:35.180
the democratic party. Hey, let's open up this nomination. Let's bring it to the convention.
00:31:39.340
The Democrats hate that because that means that there's, that'll be an unexpected chaotic convention.
00:31:45.140
That's the last thing they want to do right now. What's interesting. Watch Nancy Pelosi. She's not,
00:31:50.460
she's not a big Kamala Harris fan. She knows Kamala Harris. She's worked with her in California,
00:31:56.000
not a huge fan. So it'll be interesting to see whether Pelosi endorses Kamala or whether she gets
00:32:01.120
on board with the idea of an open convention. So the question then is, can she really run? I mean,
00:32:06.820
I, I thought even as of Thursday or Friday, I would have bet, as I said, a small amount of money
00:32:13.120
that Biden sticks it out and stays in the race. If for no other reason, then he had no incentive
00:32:18.400
really to get out. And the other candidates weren't polling better than him. You know,
00:32:23.700
there, there was an A plus poll that came out just a few days ago that showed that Kamala would lose
00:32:29.240
to Trump, that Gavin Newsom would lose to Trump by a lot. And even Michelle Obama, the fantasy
00:32:34.680
candidate who I don't think, I don't think she wants to run. I don't think that anybody really
00:32:39.100
wants to vote for her. Even she was tied with Trump. So if I'm Biden and look at that, I think,
00:32:44.800
look, I drop out that it doesn't even give the Democrats a much better odds to win. Does Kamala
00:32:50.460
Harris have what it takes to beat Trump? Well, I think that the Trump campaign has said this over
00:32:56.800
the weekend. They said, we fully expect the mainstream media to give Kamala another chance
00:33:01.360
to make the reboot. And this is what she's already been preparing to do on the campaign trail.
00:33:05.500
Look, I've been watching her campaign events. They're very scripted. They're very disciplined.
00:33:10.100
She's no longer sort of the, the laughing, cackling candidate that people are used to as vice
00:33:16.080
president. She's really focused on, on being absolutely perfect, absolutely scripted. But
00:33:22.520
that's the problem is someone who is that scripted, can they even connect with voters and voters don't
00:33:28.360
have enough? They haven't, even the democratic voters haven't warmed up to her in the first three
00:33:33.840
years. Who's going to say that in the next few months, they'll suddenly, suddenly, uh, you know,
00:33:38.900
fall in love with her. It's really going to take a long time for, for democratic voters to get,
00:33:43.900
as they're saying now, coconut pilled. If you support Kamala Harris, you're coconut pilled. You
00:33:49.560
heard AOC mentioned that on Thursday. So get your coconuts ready. Let's go.
00:33:55.140
So I feel somewhat vindicated years ago when she, before she even decided to run in the 2020 race,
00:34:00.840
I said, this woman has an uncanny ability to rise up the ladder of politics. And so I said, I keep
00:34:09.380
your eyes on Kamala Harris. And everyone was talking about all sorts of other candidates. I said, keep
00:34:12.840
your eyes on Kamala. Uh, and then she dropped out before the primaries and I started to question
00:34:17.900
myself. I said, wow, did I really misjudge that? Then she got the VP pick. I thought, oh no, I didn't
00:34:22.160
misjudge that. She's, she's a good careerist. And now amazingly, she, she is within inches of becoming
00:34:29.860
the democratic nominee for president in 2024, just three months before the general election.
00:34:35.020
Uh, some people have pointed out that her rise in politics has been somewhat disreputable.
00:34:41.140
Perhaps, uh, there are all sorts of stories about how she got her start in politics. I'm not going
00:34:45.560
to get into it. This is a family show. Uh, however, that the conservative media, at least maybe,
00:34:51.840
maybe even some of the, uh, honest brokers in the, the independent media will point out that this woman
00:34:59.600
has a little bit of a dodgy political past. Do you think, for instance, the name Willie Brown is
00:35:05.420
going to come up? I mean, do you, do you think that the early days of Kamala's political career
00:35:09.500
are going to come back to haunt her in any, uh, substantial way over the next three months?
00:35:15.300
Yeah, absolutely. And look, the Kamala Harris and her team do not want ever want to talk about
00:35:20.600
Willie Brown. She's tried to bury him for years, for decades, but she's been trying to move
00:35:24.760
her political career forward. But look, there's a huge part for those who don't know, Charlie,
00:35:30.040
I, you know, I suspect a lot of the audience knows, but would you maybe give a little introduction
00:35:33.800
to Willie Brown? Sure. Willie Brown was the, was running as mayor of San Francisco when he first
00:35:39.860
started dating Kamala Harris, Willie Brown, 60 years old, Kamala Harris is 29. Willie Brown is
00:35:45.680
still married, but estranged from his wife. So Willie and Kamala have this year long relationship
00:35:51.320
where they, she, he parades her around as a, as a potential steady girlfriend and to all the high
00:35:59.460
society people and donors and voters in San Francisco really helping you and, and even offering
00:36:06.860
her some high paid positions in state government, um, that paid her a good deal of money. So there
00:36:12.780
would be no Kamala Harris without Willie Brown. He really put her on the stage and set her up for
00:36:17.400
her start. Do you think it becomes an issue or do you think the establishment media just
00:36:21.980
successfully bury it? Oh, the establishment media is done with Willie Brown because the vice president's
00:36:27.820
office is furious. Anytime someone tries to make that part of the story, but you're going to see
00:36:32.640
conservative media talk about it and people should be talking about it. And that's why,
00:36:35.880
that's why I wrote the book because you have to know, you have to understand the relationship
00:36:40.460
between the two. If you're going to understand the rise of Kamala Harris. So forget about whether
00:36:45.540
or not Kamala beats Trump for a second. Do you think Kamala even outperforms a debilitated Joe Biden?
00:36:54.280
That's a good question because right now we're looking at some, you know, the three major states,
00:36:59.420
right? Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania. Can Kamala Harris garner enough support there
00:37:04.760
more than Joe Biden. And that'll be the, that'll be what the interesting thing that
00:37:09.800
comes up in the polls. One thing that Harris's advisors suggest is, you know, because of her
00:37:14.920
identity, maybe she'll perform better in states like North Carolina or Georgia. You know, maybe she
00:37:20.140
might cut down Trump's margin there, but ultimately it's going to take a huge amount of work to get her
00:37:27.300
up to speed and get her ready to appeal to the voters and the voters in those three major swing
00:37:32.940
states. So you've, you've studied the woman. If she does become the nominee and if, you know, we hope,
00:37:39.100
we hope against it, of course, but if she became the president, what would that look like? Who is
00:37:44.520
Kamala Harris? What does she believe? What are her priorities? Uh, what do we have to fight against
00:37:49.960
and potentially dread? Well, she's a hundred percent. Her number one goal is, is the issue
00:37:56.240
of abortion. Since Roe v. Wade was overturned, she's made that her sole political focus that
00:38:01.080
she's been campaigning across the country on the issue of abortion. It's, it'll be the number one
00:38:06.400
issue. If, if elected president, it'll be the number one issue that she starts, starts her presidency
00:38:11.420
on. She wants revenge for that decision. She wants it. She wants Roe v. Wade completely codified back
00:38:17.540
into law and she wants to punish Republicans for doing it in the first place. So I do see it as a
00:38:22.880
very hostile, very aggressive push towards that on that issue. And certainly to continue on with
00:38:29.220
and defend the entire Biden agenda that's passed so far. Uh, that is very unfortunate because one,
00:38:36.880
it's a, it's an evil, evil, uh, position to, to make your raison d'etre in politics. But, but also,
00:38:43.920
you know, I'm as pro-life as they get. When abortion has come up on the ballot since the
00:38:49.320
overruling of Roe v. Wade, the pro-lifers have not fared very well. So I'm sure Kamala Harris is
00:38:54.860
going to want to make this election in some ways, a referendum on abortion. You can see Trump trying
00:39:00.240
to choose his words carefully on abortion. You know, he, he is the most pro-life president we've
00:39:04.900
ever had. First sitting president to show up to the March for Life, appointed the judges who
00:39:09.140
overruled Roe v. Wade. So he's got, he's got very good pro-life bona fides, but he's, he's trying to,
00:39:14.960
uh, uh, minimize how he speaks about it because as he said, you got to get elected. So you can see
00:39:21.800
her even leaning into that. Uh, Charlie, thank you so much for coming on. The book is Amateur Hour.
00:39:26.220
Everyone go out, get Amateur Hour today. Uh, Charlie, I suspect the one really nice thing out of all this
00:39:32.280
news today, I suspect you're about to make a lot more money. So that's good. And then people can learn
00:39:36.640
more about Kamala Harris as a result of that. So thank you for coming on. Thanks so much for
00:39:41.620
having me, Michael. Okay. Uh, we've got news coming out now. Chuck Schumer. Schumer's come out.
00:39:47.920
He said, Joe Biden has not only been a great president and a great legislative leader,
00:39:51.580
but he's a truly amazing human being. Okay. This guy, this guy who can't discern the difference
00:40:00.820
between truth and a lie, who told black people that Mitt Romney was going to put them all back in
00:40:06.620
chains, who's told nasty, evil lies for his whole life. This guy, he's like, well, what an amazing
00:40:13.320
human being, St. Joe. Anyway, Chuck goes on. His decision, of course, was not easy. It was not easy
00:40:19.460
because you guys had to restrain him to a bed, threaten him at knife point is like, you will drop
00:40:25.140
out or, or else. Uh, but this decision was not easy, but he once again put his country, his party,
00:40:31.020
and our future first. Joe today shows you are a true Patriot and a great American. Uh, Obama,
00:40:38.660
not seeing any, any posts yet from Barack Obama. Uh, let's see. We've got a statement from Bill Clinton.
00:40:48.800
Uh, so this just came out. This is, this is a joint statement from both Bubba and secretary of state
00:40:55.540
Hillary. President Biden has capped his extraordinary career of service with a presidency. He also capital
00:41:01.900
P presidency. I think the same illiterate is writing all of these statements. They all have really weird
00:41:08.060
capitalization in them. It's a little bit of a digression, but that's kind of odd. People who
00:41:12.800
generally have a good grasp of the English language are all writing in the same weird way. And it's,
00:41:19.920
it's relevant actually, because this whole stepping down seems oddly scripted and contrived. And we
00:41:29.600
haven't actually seen Biden or heard from him directly. It, it just, it feels like the same
00:41:35.020
person is writing all of these statements. In any case, uh, career of service with a presidency that
00:41:41.080
has lifted America out of an unprecedented pandemic, created millions of new jobs, rebuilt a battered
00:41:47.140
economy, strengthened our democracy and restored our standing in the world by any measure. He has
00:41:53.740
advanced our founders, but then he doesn't capitalize founders. That's weird. His, our founders
00:41:57.560
charged to build a more perfect union and his own stated goal of restoring the soul of our nation.
00:42:02.900
We joined millions of Americans in thanking president Biden for all he has accomplished standing up for
00:42:08.900
America time and again with his North star always being what's best for the country. We're honored
00:42:14.580
to join the president and endorsing vice president Harris and we will do whatever we can to support
00:42:19.200
her. Okay. Blah, blah, blah goes on. So the Clintons are in on Harris too. Uh, Schumer, I'm not yet
00:42:26.800
seeing an endorsement of Harris from Schumer, although this is all happening in real time. So who knows?
00:42:32.240
It may have already broken. We're just, no, we're just seeing more, more plaudits for Biden. Has
00:42:42.300
Obama posted yet? Nope, not seeing anything. Last was a last tweet from Obama was three days ago.
00:42:51.160
He's talking about John Lewis, the former Democrat congressman, but you're seeing a slow turn here.
00:42:57.560
Elon Musk is reacting to the news. He said, I heard last week that he would resign at this exact time
00:43:03.040
and date. It was widespread knowledge in DC. The real powers that be are discarding the old puppet in
00:43:06.840
favor of one that has a better chance of fooling the public. They fear Trump because he's not a puppet.
00:43:10.140
Yeah. Wow. Actually, I had not read Elon Musk's post before I just said what I said, but, but Elon is
00:43:16.800
saying much the same thing. They heard that we all heard that this, this was maybe going to happen
00:43:22.800
Sunday afternoon. My, my poor wife, sweet little Elisa juggling our three toddlers. She said, can he
00:43:29.260
just do it Friday or Monday? Why is he? But, but it happened exactly the rumored time. And we're not
00:43:36.360
even hearing from him. It's, it really feels like a show. It really feels like, like an old ham actor
00:43:44.180
in a vaudeville act in a, in a, in a dying show gets the, gets the cane, gets the curtain pulled
00:43:50.540
off stage, never to be heard from again. I did make this point on my show either Thursday or Friday
00:43:55.400
when Biden left Las Vegas. He was supposed to give another, he'd given a speech in Las Vegas. That was
00:44:02.520
a disaster. He then was supposed to give another speech in Las Vegas. He didn't. The, the Democrat
00:44:09.480
who was hosting that speech came out and said, so sorry, I've heard from the president. He really
00:44:13.200
wanted to be here, but he's got COVID. So, you know, anyway, you'll never, you're not going to
00:44:18.100
hear from him. He can't be here. He's back in Rehoboth beach, not even back at the white house.
00:44:21.360
He's back at his private home. And I, I did say you might never hear from Biden on the campaign trail
00:44:28.680
again as a, as a presidential candidate. This, this might be the end of his presidential campaign
00:44:35.380
appearances. You might, you know, maybe you hear from him again as president later this week, as he
00:44:40.980
says he, he might do, but he's, if, if he takes any questions from the press and if there's even one
00:44:48.140
honest journalist in the group, he's going to have to face the question, how can you possibly continue
00:44:54.960
to serve as president? If you're too weak and senile to run for president, how can you possibly
00:45:01.400
continue to serve as president? Now he might not face that question because don't, don't forget
00:45:06.880
the liberal establishment journalists have been hard on Biden in recent weeks because they wanted
00:45:12.600
to strengthen the Democrat ticket in their mind by replacing him as the nominee. So any difficult
00:45:20.120
questions that they made Biden face was only in service of their, their usual goal, which is
00:45:27.340
furthering leftism, furthering the democratic party. So now that he's given them what they want,
00:45:34.380
there's no reason to expect that the press will give him any difficult questions.
00:45:38.600
And that's not even, it's a difficult question for him to answer, but it's such an obvious question.
00:45:42.260
How can you continue to serve as president? And what happened behind the scenes? What got this guy
00:45:49.020
to turn from, I am sticking it out, come hell or high water, I will be the nominee, to
00:45:55.960
this statement tweeted for him while he's hidden away in Delaware? Was there any threat made to invoke
00:46:06.620
the 25th amendment to remove him from office and from the campaign trail? What, I don't know,
00:46:12.160
I have no reason to believe that that's the case other than the chatter that we've heard in the
00:46:16.960
establishment media, the same establishment media that's getting the credit for chasing him out of
00:46:20.140
the race. But regardless, he is out of the race. And what does this mean for Republicans?
00:46:28.600
I said for weeks that I think in many ways, Biden, even obviously senile, was the strongest candidate
00:46:40.620
for the Democrats. Kamala Harris, as we've observed, has never been able to even stay in the race long
00:46:49.800
enough to win a single vote while running in a primary. Gavin Newsom, give me a break. I don't
00:46:54.920
think Gavin Newsom plays in Peoria. Michelle Obama? What? No. So I said, look, it's not that Biden is
00:47:02.340
strong. Biden still looks like he's going to lose to Trump, but he might be the best available.
00:47:08.680
Democrats obviously have felt differently. And if I'm a Republican, if I'm the Trump campaign right
00:47:13.240
now, that does worry me a little bit. Because even if Trump, or even if Biden rather, was relatively
00:47:21.720
stronger than Harris. Harris, there's more unpredictability. With Harris, you just don't
00:47:28.200
know. You don't know how the media are going to react to her this time. You don't know how the
00:47:32.440
identity politics are going to play. You don't know how the relative youth is going to play.
00:47:36.320
Now, speaking of a youthful politician, I have one of the most brilliant young politicians in
00:47:41.720
America Online, my friend Vivek Ramaswamy. Vivek, thank you for joining.
00:47:49.480
I'm, I'm, I don't know how I'm doing, actually. Vivek, I was going to say, I guess I'm doing well
00:47:54.660
because this bad thing happened to Biden. But I don't know if this hurts or improves Trump's
00:48:02.200
chances in 2024. What's your reaction? Yeah, well, look, my reaction is, first of all,
00:48:07.760
just follow the incentives. And you tend to, it tends to be the best way to predict what's
00:48:12.780
actually going to happen. Right. You know, Michael, you and I have been talking probably
00:48:16.320
for over a year. I said this first last spring and more prominently during the Republican debates,
00:48:22.540
it was dismissed as a conspiracy theory. Now it's played out as reality. Yeah. And so I'll stick to
00:48:28.900
the same pattern of, you know, and all the way down to even my concerns about a system that was
00:48:34.620
going to have a non-tolerating response to Trump being the nominee. Although I think divine providence
00:48:40.180
found its way to, to guide ourselves to the right outcome. So let's use the same, same sort of lens.
00:48:46.320
Now, what are the incentives going forward? Their incentives are to win, but it's not an individual,
00:48:52.220
right? If you understand that, if you think it's an individual that we're up against, you're missing the
00:48:55.460
point. Yeah. We're up against a machine. So I think it would be a mistake for Republicans to sort
00:49:01.640
of train our critical fire of criticism on Kamala. Now, no, I don't think that's the right way to go
00:49:08.000
because she too is a puppet of the same machine. Biden has cognitive deficits. So does she in both
00:49:14.020
cases, their cognitive deficits are not a bug. They're a feature. And I think what we have to
00:49:19.720
understand is that we're up against that machine. We're running against a system. Our only way to
00:49:25.280
insulate ourselves against that is to actually call out that fact, say who we are and what we
00:49:30.360
actually stand for. And I think a lot of Democrats and a lot of independents now realize they've been
00:49:35.560
lied to about probably the single most important of the so-called conspiracy theories turned reality
00:49:40.120
in the last several years. I mean, we've got the Hunter Biden laptop. You got the Russia collusion
00:49:44.380
hoax. You got the origin of COVID. Those are big ones, right? But this might be the one that goes down
00:49:50.320
in the history books as the one that's most lasting, is a machine lying about the capability
00:49:55.580
of the U.S. commander-in-chief to actually serve as the commander-in-chief. Biden is not the current
00:49:59.080
president of the United States in any functional sense, and they've lied about it. And I think that
00:50:03.540
that creates an opening for us to really develop an honest message to the American people that we are
00:50:09.440
not running to beat the next puppet of that system. We're running to break that system.
00:50:18.220
I noticed, Vivek, in Milwaukee. I was unfortunately only there very briefly because I didn't want my
00:50:23.560
wife to murder me upon my return with our little newborn and the other toddlers. But I was there
00:50:29.020
long enough to catch how extremely well you were received. When you showed up to the RNC,
00:50:36.240
the crowd went wild. They were very excited about the vision that you're presenting. And so,
00:50:42.000
obviously, you've endorsed and supported President Trump, and you're part of the team
00:50:48.160
and an important player on the team. So if you were advising the Trump campaign right now,
00:50:54.140
how do you tell them to react to this news? And what specifically do you go after if tomorrow
00:51:06.280
Look, I think that the right track, and first of all, I will say is I've had great conversations with
00:51:12.000
President Trump. I actually, whatever, spoke to him in the last hour or so since this came out.
00:51:16.220
He doesn't, he's in the right headspace. I think that he is in a, operating at a different plane
00:51:21.880
than even he was as recently as probably 48 years ago, even maybe as recently as 46 months ago.
00:51:30.120
And I think that he is, he understands that he's effectively right now the leader of the country.
00:51:36.360
Right. Not, he's not the President of the United States in the nominal sense of it.
00:51:40.420
But just as a child in a household, you brought up young children, I have young children,
00:51:44.700
just as young children need to know that there's a mother and a father figure in the house.
00:51:49.860
And here are the people who fill that vacuum in my heart as a member of this household.
00:51:54.580
Citizens need to know that here's the leader of our country right now.
00:51:58.000
And when you just ask in an ordinary sense of the word, right, to a citizen on the street,
00:52:02.380
you ask them, who's that leader that grounds your sense of nation and your stability as a citizen of
00:52:07.940
this nation? It's not Joe Biden right now. I think that person in their heart right now is Donald
00:52:11.900
Trump. And I think he understands that too. And he's rising to that occasion. And so I don't think
00:52:17.700
he needs the advice that I, that I would give, but here's what it is nonetheless. And I'm,
00:52:22.620
you know, I'll share it nonetheless, because I think it's important for all of us to,
00:52:25.760
to sort of hold ourselves to the standard is we have to offer our own vision of who we are
00:52:31.260
and why we're running to actually save this country and why president Trump is going to be the person
00:52:37.860
to do it, irrespective of who they put up. I don't think the knee jerk temptation to go now come up
00:52:44.660
with specified tailor-made criticism of Kamala Harris is the right way to go. I think that would
00:52:49.720
come across and look insecure. It would look like we're worried when in fact we have no reason to be
00:52:54.100
worried. And instead, I think just point out the fact that, okay, here's the latest lie they told
00:52:58.660
you. It's part of a recurring pattern over the last eight years. It's not an individual who's at
00:53:03.200
fault. It's an entire machine that we're going in there to actually beat and defeat. Not an
00:53:07.940
individual, but a machine. It's the managerial class that has crushed the will. That wheel of
00:53:12.360
the managerial class continues to turn and crush the will of the everyday citizen. I don't care if
00:53:17.120
you're a Democrat or Republican or a black or white citizen, we're here to restore a country where
00:53:21.800
the people's voices are heard and they're represented. And I think that that's a message
00:53:26.520
that now a lot more Democrats and independents may be more receptive to than they might've been.
00:53:30.980
That's really insightful, Vivek. That's really, because Biden, unlike more ideological candidates,
00:53:37.500
Biden's always been kind of an empty suit. And so if Republicans had tailored all of our
00:53:42.480
criticisms of this administration against the man, Joe Biden, and then all, you know, we say,
00:53:47.380
Joe Biden's the worst man in the country. And then all of a sudden we have to,
00:53:50.000
we have to flip on a moment's notice and say, no, actually, sorry, Kamala Harris is the worst
00:53:54.180
person in the country. That would seem disingenuous, but, but that's not our problem
00:53:58.680
with it. Kamala Harris is just, just as empty a suit as I guess maybe a pantsuit or a dress or
00:54:03.340
something, but, but she's basically the same kind of politician as Joe Biden is. And that's not
00:54:08.580
really our, I don't really care about either of them personally much at all. I care about the machine
00:54:13.480
that they are, are part of and nominally leading.
00:54:18.060
The individual is irrelevant. The collective machine is all that matters. And in a certain
00:54:21.820
sense, Michael, I mean, it's even truer with the broader philosophy of what the left represents and
00:54:25.120
is always right. Right. Right. Is that the denial of human agency in some ways, I'm not going to make
00:54:30.600
this too philosophical, but that's just manifest in the way that they run the machine that you and
00:54:34.760
I are talking about as well. So the more we stay clear-eyed about that, the more successful we're
00:54:38.900
going to be. And that'd be my advice to our entire party and our entire movement. And, you know,
00:54:44.200
I don't think he needs it, but to Donald Trump, that's, that's sort of my perspective as well.
00:54:47.480
Before I let you go, because you have been uncanny in your predictions of what would transpire,
00:54:53.680
you know, over the course of the past year or so, do you have any guesses as to who Kamala might
00:55:01.540
pick or who the democratic establishment might pick to be her running mate? So look, I think there's two
00:55:06.820
viable choices for who the nominee is going to be. Just because Biden has endorsed Harris does
00:55:11.500
not automatically mean it's going to be her. I think the two choices are Kamala or Michelle
00:55:14.860
Obama. I think those remain the two choices. I've said that all along. I say it now because
00:55:18.780
they checked the identity politic commitment boxes at the same time that allows them to
00:55:24.980
feign the commitments they had made at the time they made Kamala Harris, the vice presidential
00:55:30.100
nominee, when she had no merit in fulfilling that role. Suppose it's Kamala. I think Josh Shapiro
00:55:35.480
is likely to be the VP. I could be totally wrong about this, but again, I've been wrong. You
00:55:40.780
know, I've had a few, I've had a lot of things over the last couple of years, Michael, that
00:55:44.880
were, would be conspiracy theories that have turned into reality. Conspiracy theorems, I
00:55:50.560
call them now. They've been proven. Right, right, right. Truth theorems is what they ended up
00:55:54.040
being, you know, and, you know, I was, you know, I'm grateful that some of those did not
00:56:01.840
transpire even if only by a hair's breadth. Right. But, you know, in terms of what the
00:56:06.280
other side would try to do, it's, you know, it was, I think in some ways, I think divine
00:56:12.400
providence guided the founding of this country and I think guided us a week ago as well on that
00:56:18.440
Saturday. But nonetheless, I do think that in the spirit of, you know, tracking what my
00:56:24.760
instincts are here, I think Josh Shapiro may end up being the VP to Kamala. It's not complicated.
00:56:30.360
It's not rocket science. Follow the incentives. Pennsylvania, key state, they need to win it
00:56:35.200
in order to win the election. Somebody's well-spoken offers a visual deflection off of the identity
00:56:40.980
politic basis for them selecting Kamala and maybe even brings some of the, some of the Jewish
00:56:46.760
vote back. Right. I think that there, there may be some of the things that they're looking at
00:56:49.900
through the world of checking boxes. I think he's not an unreasonable choice. He actually talks a
00:56:54.980
good game. The reality is he unfortunately doesn't live up to it. He says the right things about school
00:56:59.860
choice, but push comes to shove, doesn't actually implement it in Pennsylvania, but people just
00:57:04.040
remember the things he said. Right. And that's the way our world works. So I think if it's Kamala,
00:57:08.980
I think there's a good chance Josh Shapiro is the VP. If it's Michelle Obama, I don't think who the VP is
00:57:13.200
matters. But I do think that those are the viable paths that I see going forward.
00:57:17.460
Just in case anyone thinks that Vivek is exaggerating here about his prescience,
00:57:22.160
we have it. Here he is during the presidential debate predicting that this very thing would occur.
00:57:29.120
I also want to close with one message to the Democrat party. End this farce that Joe Biden is
00:57:34.080
going to be your nominee. We know he's not even the president of the United States. He's a puppet for
00:57:38.600
the managerial class. So have the guts to step up and be honest about who you're actually going to
00:57:43.240
put up so we can have an honest debate. Biden should step aside and his candidacy now so we
00:57:48.640
can see whether it's Newsom or Michelle Obama or whoever else. Just tell us the truth so we can
00:57:52.960
have an honest debate. Vivek, I love it. All right. All right. That's enough. That's enough of the truth.
00:57:57.860
Get that out of here. You called it. They roasted me as a conspiracy theorist after that one,
00:58:03.040
because this is quite early and even dating back to last spring. But nonetheless, there are some of
00:58:08.580
the things I was right on. I wish I had not been right on. This one, I feel less, it's neither good
00:58:15.240
nor bad. It's just what's true is forget less about the individual. The other side does not see the
00:58:20.200
world in terms of individual agency anyway. They believe in a collective machine. That's what we're
00:58:24.900
up against. And that's what we're going to defeat. So you raise the possibility that maybe the
00:58:29.220
Democrats won't follow Biden's lead. They won't go with Kamala. Maybe they'll pick
00:58:32.400
a Michelle Obama even. Would you bet on some kind of convention fight?
00:58:38.760
Can I just try to stop you on the follow Biden's lead? Like even the notion that he's Biden's
00:58:42.720
leader has ever been Biden's lead at all. I think it takes the essence of what's happening, right?
00:58:47.960
Yeah. There's been no sense in which there's been a Biden lead at any point in his presidency.
00:58:52.000
Right. He is a hollowed out husk of a U.S. president, a stuffed suit that they wield as a
00:59:02.280
pawn, right? The idea that Biden has led to anything is a joke. So the idea of following
00:59:06.880
his lead is itself, I think, with respect, an incoherent concept.
00:59:13.200
I agree with it. Just the concept doesn't exist. So the question is what the machine determines.
00:59:18.420
You know, him saying that today was part of the machine.
00:59:22.200
As I said earlier, Vivek, I'm not even convinced the man knows that he tweeted that.
00:59:27.520
We will have to stay tuned. Thank you very much for taking time out of your Sunday when
00:59:32.460
Biden decided to screw up all of our Sunday afternoons. But thank you. Thank you. Thank
00:59:36.900
you for coming on. And we'll have to have you back soon so that we can figure out what's
00:59:42.080
going to happen in the next three to six months. You know, we got to we got to keep I don't
00:59:46.460
know how to make my only advice. It's actually very simple. Follow the incentives, add them up,
00:59:51.600
and the future actually becomes relatively clear. It's often far simpler than it is complicated.
00:59:57.260
Just follow the incentives and see where that takes you.
00:59:59.740
That is too commonsensical. That is spoken like a man who has done well in business.
01:00:03.620
You know, Vivek, that is no place in politics. Simple incentives. Thank you, sir. Thank you for
01:00:09.340
coming on. We will be having Ben Shapiro coming on soon enough. I thought, why isn't he here right now?
01:00:15.420
What the heck is going on? This is not Shabbat. I don't I don't know what golf course Ben is on
01:00:21.700
right now, but we will be hearing from Ben very shortly. And I look forward to to his. I can't
01:00:29.340
figure out if it's going to be glee because he did. He had an excellent episode of facts come out
01:00:36.460
just a couple of days ago saying, OK, what happens when Biden gets out? So, you know, he also clearly
01:00:42.060
saw this coming. And then and then he can bring not only political analysis, but legal analysis to
01:00:47.260
what happens just legally through through the the Democratic National Committee. What what what
01:00:55.320
will happen with the convention? What will happen as the state deadlines come due? Moments like this
01:01:00.840
are exactly why the Daily Wire exists. We are here to cut through the left's narrative and ensure
01:01:06.200
America gets the truth. With the election season heating up, you cannot afford to miss what happens
01:01:10.740
next. Join us now and save 47 percent with code fight. Do not be left in the dark. Be part of the
01:01:18.980
fight. Do that right now. That's certainly what I will do. I'll light up one of my Michael Knowles
01:01:24.480
show candles. Maybe I'll spot. I don't know if I'm allowed to talk about Mayflower, but maybe I'll
01:01:28.080
spark one of those up. Who knows? Who knows what will happen? I don't know that Joe Biden knows right
01:01:33.820
now. We're getting some breaking news. This from Gavin Newsom. Gavin Newsom has come out.
01:01:42.820
Will he endorse Kamala? Will he? Oh, no, I don't see any Kamala endorsements here. President Biden
01:01:47.420
has been an extraordinary history making president. Well, that's true. He has made history. He's
01:01:52.880
maybe the most failed president in American history. I'm trying to think of a James Buchanan maybe would go
01:02:02.960
down as worse or I don't know. Millard film. Maybe. I don't know. I mean, he Biden makes Chester A.
01:02:14.060
Arthur look like, you know, Lincoln or Roosevelt or something. But but he says Biden's been an
01:02:20.680
extraordinary history making president, a leader who has fought hard for working people and delivered
01:02:25.460
astonishing results for all Americans. That's true. The results have astonished us. We didn't realize how
01:02:30.660
bad things could could actually get in the course of just three years. He will go down in history as
01:02:35.100
one of the most impactful and selfless presidents. I love that word impactful, which is a nonsensical
01:02:40.340
word. It's just that, you know, he's a president that's just so full of impact. You know, he's just
01:02:45.240
absolutely bursting at the seams, filled to the brim with impact and selfless presidents. So so nothing
01:02:50.940
here other than, hey, Joe, thanks for getting out of the race. But I'm not endorsing Kamala. We have
01:02:55.720
Mr. Shapiro on the line. Ben, Ben, where are you? Why am I sitting here? Why aren't you sitting
01:03:02.180
here? Oh, I'm in the middle of nowhere, you know, summertime where you are able to go off on vacation
01:03:08.560
a little bit, enjoy your life a little bit. But every Sunday, something terrible happens or
01:03:12.880
something wonderful happens, depending on your perspective. And and we're all back at work,
01:03:16.200
right? So, you know, I will have an emergency episode of the podcast that much later tonight.
01:03:20.680
I was about to get on a plane. But, you know, such a such is like Joe Biden is out to ruin America
01:03:25.220
and he's ruined my life as well. So I said this when when I got the call that he had he had made
01:03:31.100
this post. Sweet little Elisa did turn to me. She goes, oh, no. And I thought this is Biden.
01:03:37.340
His last act as the Democrat nominee is to screw up all of our Sundays. So what's your take? You saw
01:03:43.320
this happening. You had an excellent episode of facts come out, what, two days ago on what happens
01:03:48.500
and what what will happen, you know, imminently when he gets out of the race. So you've seen he's
01:03:53.940
endorsed Kamala Harris. The Clintons have come out and endorsed his endorsement of Kamala Harris.
01:03:58.820
Gavin Newsom has come out and endorsed his dropping out, but not his endorsement of Kamala Harris.
01:04:02.660
We've got the Democratic National Convention less than a month away. We've got the ballot deadlines
01:04:07.600
and at least Ohio just for the nominee to get on the ballot coming up much sooner than that.
01:04:12.080
So what happens? Well, I mean, I think that what happens, first of all,
01:04:16.160
there's a good episode of facts that we put out, as you say, a couple of days ago that says exactly
01:04:20.500
what happens next. If you were to drop out, we also have a three part series on Kamala Harris that
01:04:26.460
is available at Daily Wire, plus also available at YouTube. So people should check that out if
01:04:29.620
they want to know what the next nominee looks like. She's she will be the nominee. The consolidation
01:04:32.920
behind her is too solid. It's too fast. No one is going to have the stomach to go up against both
01:04:36.940
the Obamas and the Clintons in the middle of all of this. Nancy Pelosi's come out in favor of her
01:04:40.620
for Noah Jai Paul. The consolidation is incredibly quick. He knew it had to be. The problem,
01:04:44.780
of course, is she's a wildly incompetent and unpopular vice president. So does that mean
01:04:49.520
that Donald Trump still has the upper hand? It does. But this race changes dramatically.
01:04:54.980
In one real sense, the Biden failure here was a mass debate and switch. The entire Republican
01:05:01.880
party shifted its focus from the failures of his policy to the failures of his brain. And what
01:05:07.300
because of that, that took focus off of the failure of his policy, which is the thing you
01:05:10.560
actually have to run against if you're running against Kamala, right? Because her brain may be
01:05:14.060
screwed up in very different ways than Joe Biden. And so the sort of attempt to kind of, yeah,
01:05:20.580
mold her together, that's kind of staple her to Biden is going to have to be done on a policy
01:05:25.600
basis. It's going to be very difficult to do that on a personal basis. She has her own independent
01:05:28.980
set of foibles. But anything looks better than an actual walking corpse as the presidential
01:05:34.060
candidate. But she's still alive. Words come out of her mouth that actually sound like words,
01:05:38.940
even if the sentences don't sound like sentences. And so in that sense, it will be an upgrade.
01:05:43.400
Obviously, Democrats will be much more likely to get out to vote. Now, the Democratic voter turnout
01:05:47.120
is going to be jazzed by this, particularly in the black community. You would assume the media are
01:05:50.600
going to try and weave a story where it's 1000 take on Kamala Harris is tempering a new look,
01:05:56.560
she's a new person. All of that may be false, but it's such a short time until the election
01:06:00.360
that it takes a little while to debunk these particular sorts of narratives. And again,
01:06:04.380
she is somewhat set in the public imagination, but certainly not in the same way that Joe Biden
01:06:08.960
was set or Donald Trump is set in the public imagination. So it's going to be up to Donald
01:06:12.300
Trump and the Trump campaign to really define her in the public eye. She's been in the public eye,
01:06:16.600
but she's been secondary in the public eye. She's not been primary in the public eye.
01:06:19.660
Yeah, I think basically no one knows anything about her. I mean, even politicos don't know how to
01:06:25.560
pronounce her name. So she's a blank slate for the Democrats to draw on or for the Republicans to draw on.
01:06:34.380
You know, to get to the mendacity of the media for a moment, you know, in 2020, the same media who
01:06:42.200
have spent the last several weeks openly discussing Biden's obvious senility and dementia in 2020 said
01:06:50.600
that it was just a recurrence of a childhood stutter. And today I saw coverage on CBS News.
01:06:56.160
They said, you know, Joe Biden, he was known for his whole career since the 70s as one of the great
01:07:00.560
orators of the Senate. And when he lost his ability to speak, that was the sign that he had to get out
01:07:05.420
of the race. And I thought, you people, you liars, you frauds, you told us three years ago that his
01:07:12.800
inability to speak was no big deal. And actually it had been happening for decades. So of course,
01:07:18.000
they'll try to paint Kamala as, you know, some living saint or something like that.
01:07:23.440
Can they do it? You know, what is the Republican definition of Kamala before they have the chance?
01:07:31.720
So I think you really have to define Kamala as a principle free person who, if anything,
01:07:36.960
is very radical. She is, in fact, incredibly corrupt. She her entire career has been failing
01:07:42.460
up. She's incompetent. She was given control of the border. She failed on that. She was given
01:07:47.660
control of a wide variety of other issues. Sentinel, for example, she failed on those.
01:07:51.220
There's going to be a lot to mine with Kamala, but it's not going to be nearly as easy as it was
01:07:55.660
with Joe Biden. And again, as you say, because I think Republican politicos feel that Kamala is
01:08:01.020
pretty well-defined, but the general public does not see her as particularly well-defined. The only
01:08:04.680
people who remember her remember her from the primary, didn't like her very much, but they like
01:08:08.200
her better now because she was a Democratic primary and now she's vice president of the United
01:08:11.320
States. The general American public doesn't like her very much. That's a reflection of Biden's
01:08:14.900
policy. It's not a reflection of hers. So I think that the biggest thing that Republicans can do
01:08:19.080
is continue to keep a spotlight on Kamala Harris. What Democrats have done that's very smart here
01:08:22.660
is they have, again, reshifted the conversation away from whom this is a referendum on. So again,
01:08:29.280
my entire take on this campaign was going to be, if this election was a referendum on Biden,
01:08:32.540
Biden loses. If it was a referendum on Trump, Trump loses. Well, by getting Biden out of the race,
01:08:36.900
this election, once again, can easily turn into a referendum on Trump. So I think that,
01:08:41.800
again, Trump has an advantage in the polls. They're running a relatively unknown candidate who is
01:08:46.280
very uncharming, who's really great on the ear. But with that said, if she is seen as less
01:08:54.800
controversial than Trump, if Trump is not incredibly disciplined from here on in, this could turn into
01:08:59.980
a real race again pretty quickly. And I think also it'll be interesting to see who she picks as VP.
01:09:04.480
I don't think that typically matters a lot, but I think it matters in terms of defining her as a
01:09:07.740
candidate because she's such an unknown. Who she picks as VP is going to be a good indicator to the
01:09:11.720
public as to how she's thinking in the same way that it's sort of picking J.D. Vance is obviously
01:09:15.920
Donald Trump's attempt to appeal to Rust Belt states, maybe some of the traditional conservative
01:09:20.480
base socially. I think that who she picks is going to speak to how she wants to be perceived.
01:09:24.800
So if she picks somebody who's perceived as somewhat moderate, let's say she picks like
01:09:28.460
Amy Klobuchar from Minnesota, or let's say she picks Josh Shapiro from Pennsylvania or Andy
01:09:33.420
Beshear from Kentucky, then that's going to be seen as a moderation play by Kamala. And that's
01:09:37.360
going to be a smart pick. If she picks somebody who's perceived as somewhat more radical than
01:09:41.060
Gavin Newsom, for example, that'd be a huge mistake by her. Bottom line is this entire
01:09:46.240
race just got turned upside down and got completely reshuffled. Anybody who pretends they have an
01:09:49.700
excellent read on this race, five minutes after Joe Biden dropped out, they're lying. There is no
01:09:54.240
good read on this race at this point. The polling data does not matter because the polling data
01:09:58.020
was assuming, like everybody was like, okay, well, would I vote for Kamala? You don't know anything
01:10:01.880
about Kamala. You're just kind of saying you would or you wouldn't. Now that she's at the top of the
01:10:04.760
ticket, it radically changed everything. The two things that I think that she is vulnerable on in
01:10:09.380
terms of sort of political line, vulnerability, number one, she was complicit in this cover up
01:10:14.100
and Republicans should hammer her for this. She was obviously like up till last week, she was saying
01:10:18.020
he was perfectly fine. He's totally normal. Everything is fine. They should immediately put
01:10:21.300
out a series of ads labeling her a liar because she is a liar. So they should, they should hit her with
01:10:25.060
dishonesty. Only 18% of Americans actually believe that Joe Biden was mentally fit for the presidency.
01:10:31.280
And the vast majority of Americans, like 80% of Americans believe that anyone who defends
01:10:35.800
Joe Biden's mental fitness is a liar. So they should be hitting her on that right away. The
01:10:40.180
second thing is that Joe Biden is not resigning the presidency. And so serious pressure should
01:10:43.480
be put on her to explain why she's not invoking the 25th amendment. If he's truly senile enough,
01:10:47.480
he can't run for a second term. Then why exactly is she sitting by and watching if he completely
01:10:51.760
destroys the world? She is complicit in every one of his policies because she has the power
01:10:55.440
today to take him off the seat, right? She has the power today to get her cabinet mobilized. It's
01:11:00.540
actually her job to do that. And she's not doing that, which means that she is now responsible
01:11:04.320
for all of his activities now until the election.
01:11:06.700
That's right. Because, you know, if he doesn't actually resign the presidency, then you're talking
01:11:10.680
about six or seven months of a man who is admitting that he's too senile to run. That's
01:11:17.300
obviously very dangerous. If I'm Xi Jinping or Vladimir Putin, I'm paying close attention to
01:11:21.440
that. You bring up the potential running mates. We've heard some rumor in the Beltway Press that
01:11:28.040
it could be Shapiro. No relation, I hope. Shapiro in Pennsylvania or Bashir in Kentucky. Do you have
01:11:35.300
any bets? I would probably bet. I think it's very difficult to see Shapiro. I think that the base
01:11:42.360
of the Democratic Party, I mean, not to be blunt about this, but I'll be blunt about this. I don't
01:11:46.020
think they hate the Jews vice president. Yes. I mean, I think it's that simple. I really do. And by the way,
01:11:50.420
I've heard that from Democratic Congress people. So, I mean, that's not just me saying that. Like,
01:11:53.560
there's a solid base in the Democratic Party that does not want to see a Jew in the second position
01:11:57.240
in the middle of the Israel conflict. So, I think that it's more likely that she goes with somebody
01:12:02.280
like a Bashir. I could see a world where they're so intoxicated by the intersectionality that they
01:12:08.540
actually go with Gretchen Whitmer in Michigan in the hope that that wins the Michigan and also
01:12:11.540
creates the first all-female ticket. One of the things that's happened in this election cycle is this
01:12:15.360
massive, large gender gap between the Democrats and the Republicans. Males are overwhelmingly voting for
01:12:20.840
Trump. Females, particularly single females, are overwhelmingly voting for voting for the Democratic
01:12:25.120
ticket. And so, you could really exacerbate that by putting another woman on the ticket and then
01:12:28.740
basically daring Donald Trump to be super sexist, right? And then just try to drive out female votes
01:12:33.640
in the swing states, focus in on abortion, focus in on male-female divide, and really polarize the
01:12:39.040
country along those lines. That wouldn't be super shocking. I think it's stupid, but I think it wouldn't
01:12:42.160
be super shocking to see them attempt something like that because they're always going for the
01:12:45.260
historic first. And so, why not have the first historic all-female ticket?
01:12:48.840
Turning the White House into the Longhouse does not seem like the best campaign appeal, but maybe,
01:12:54.960
maybe these days. So, we still don't know if it's officially Kamala. I was just talking to Vivek,
01:13:01.360
who said, look, maybe there's a chance they push for Michelle or something at the convention.
01:13:05.820
No way. No way. Not a chance. It's Kamala. It's Kamala. I mean, listen, Vivek's great. Also,
01:13:11.100
it's Kamala. That's all wish casting. Michelle is not coming in. She has no interest in coming in.
01:13:18.040
I think the real question for somebody like a Josh Shapiro is whether he actually wants to sign up
01:13:21.680
with this ticket given all the myriad weaknesses. He might want to wait another cycle. Honestly,
01:13:26.080
if you're a Democrat, it's a pretty risky cycle. So, maybe what you want to do is wait, see Kamala
01:13:29.480
Harris who you don't like very much anyway, go down and flinch to Trump, figure the midterms will go
01:13:33.280
against the Republicans, and then run in 28. I mean, that is a serious consideration for everyone,
01:13:37.780
except maybe Bashir, who's thinking seriously about running for president.
01:13:40.800
Right. And of course, if you're Kamala, you know, unlike a Gavin Newsom who might think,
01:13:44.980
look, I'll be viable in 28. I'll be viable in 32, for goodness sakes. With Kamala, this is kind of
01:13:49.920
her shot. So, I see why she- Oh, she's got another shot. I mean, of course.
01:13:53.260
Listen, she lucked into it. I think, come on. She has no shot at being elected dog catcher
01:13:57.720
anywhere else. So, this or bust for Kamala Harris. Last question before I let you get back to enjoying
01:14:02.760
your Sunday until you don't get to enjoy your Sunday anymore and have to do your emergency episode of
01:14:06.040
The Bench Bureau Show. You mentioned that the focus will have to be on issues. Vivek actually
01:14:11.680
made a similar point. He said, you know, we're running against the machine. We're not running
01:14:14.800
against the individual of Joe Biden or Kamala, anyway. So, Kamala has made abortion a big hobby
01:14:22.100
horse, certainly since the Dobbs ruling, and frankly, while she was a senator and AG in California.
01:14:29.060
So, is that it? Is that her big issue that she's running on? What are the issues that dominate
01:14:34.140
from the Harris campaign and then also from the Trump campaign attacking the Harris campaign?
01:14:40.500
So, I think there are a few things that she's going to do. I think, number one,
01:14:43.000
she is going to run on abortion. I think, number two, she is going to run on the idea that Donald
01:14:47.980
Trump is a candidate of excess, and she's not going to let the January 6th thing go. She will run on
01:14:51.600
an age now. She actually will. She'll say, and you've seen this line being retailed almost immediately,
01:14:56.560
that you said that there were two candidates, but the parties, you know, the general public didn't like
01:15:00.080
either candidate because they were too old. I'm 59, he's 78. We just got our old candidate,
01:15:04.060
why is he still in? Do you really want this generation of politicians running? It's a really
01:15:07.720
cynical play, but I would not be shocked at all if they attempt to do that. In terms of some of
01:15:12.360
the other issues that I think that she'd probably focus on, again, I think that she's going to go
01:15:15.500
into the, I'm a prosecutor mode, the same way she did when she first entered the Senate,
01:15:19.140
say, I'm going to prosecute the case against Donald Trump. Now, as for Trump and the issues,
01:15:22.700
obviously, he's got an enormous number of issues that he can focus in on. The thing that scares me
01:15:27.920
about the current situation, if you're a Republican, again, I'm a Trump donor, I want him to win.
01:15:32.260
I mean, make no mistake, I still think he has the advantage. But the thing that it has to be
01:15:35.960
kind of gnawing at the center of your stomach is this feels a lot now, like sort of the distracting,
01:15:41.200
the distraction that we had in the Mehmet Oz versus John Fetterman race, where the entire
01:15:44.660
Republican Party centered in on the fact that John Fetterman was mentally disabled, actually,
01:15:48.780
for large portions of that race because of the stroke. And the people just went, okay, yeah,
01:15:52.740
but we don't like Mehmet Oz very much. And so I think that that's what Republicans have to worry
01:15:56.520
about, especially in the aftermath of this. We've spent so much time focusing in on the fact that
01:16:00.320
Joe Biden is mentally unfit for the office. How do you switch now back to the policy? So you can
01:16:06.200
hammer her on the border, you can hammer her on her comments on healthcare, you can do all this,
01:16:10.460
but it's gonna like, it's gonna have to be an over the top straight at the issues thing. And again,
01:16:14.960
I think that that Trump's tactic of taking on personalities here is going to be a little bit
01:16:19.920
less successful than it otherwise would be specifically because it's not Biden. I think that I think he runs
01:16:24.920
the real risk of, let's put it this way, if he makes the entire campaign about Willie Brown,
01:16:30.700
which I think is going to be a temptation for him, I don't think that that's going to be a
01:16:34.180
particularly smart strategy. Because again, what she's hoping for is for him to act on hinge,
01:16:38.960
right? This entire campaign now rests on can Donald Trump control himself. If Donald Trump can
01:16:42.840
control himself, he'll be president of the United States. If he acts on hinge, then she's going to try
01:16:47.200
and play moderate for a hot second until she is elected president in her own right.
01:16:51.960
Yeah. Yeah. And I think a hopeful sign, you were watching the RNC the whole time. I was there in
01:16:59.320
the room for a fair bit of it. And Trump and his supporters seemed very focused, certainly more so
01:17:09.340
than perhaps we'd seen in the more eccentric and rowdy 2016 campaign, but even open to the possibility
01:17:15.540
that Biden would not be the nominee. So the Trump campaign had been signaling, look, we might not even
01:17:20.340
be running against Biden. To me, that's a very good sign. I think Trump's in a much better position
01:17:24.860
than he was in 2016, specifically because there have now been massive permission structures that
01:17:28.520
have been created in favor of people voting for Trump, right? That's why you're seeing all the
01:17:32.220
tech bros suddenly coming out and saying nice things about Trump. They might have secretly said
01:17:35.480
it before, but now they're openly saying it. So that few week gap between debate and now did heavy
01:17:40.700
work for Trump because it created an opening where people could suddenly say, you know, I'll actually
01:17:44.340
think about voting Trump and say it openly, not just say it themselves, say it openly. And that
01:17:48.300
permission structure makes it very difficult to kind of portray Trump as kind of the wild,
01:17:51.880
radical, insane person that Democrats are trying to portray him as. So it's a fresh race on both
01:17:55.640
sides. I mean, we're talking about it's a fresh race for Republicans against Democrats. It's kind
01:17:58.940
of a fresh race for Democrats against Republicans as well, because Trump has been somewhat redefined in
01:18:03.400
the public eye as the moderate and as the person who's actually the candidate of solidity in this
01:18:09.100
campaign. And so Harris is going to have to once again, go back to the well and try to prove
01:18:12.620
that Trump is unhinged and radical. And if Trump can avoid that, then again, I think he retains the advantage.
01:18:18.300
All right. That gives me a little bit of hope, even as we're all I think people are really mixed
01:18:23.100
today. I don't know what to think. I'm glad that we've been vindicated and that now even Biden is
01:18:28.560
admitting or his handlers are admitting that, yeah, you're right. I'm not I'm not I'm not I'm not
01:18:33.240
glad we've been vindicated. I wish that he had stayed in all the way. I mean, yeah, I was pulling
01:18:36.560
because I mean, especially because, again, the Democrats, the Democrats kept lying and they were lying
01:18:40.800
and lying and lying. And now I get to hear all this crap. I mean, I was frankly enjoying the specter of
01:18:45.880
Democrats for the first time in my lifetime being asked difficult questions by the media.
01:18:49.440
And now we go right to Kamala Harris is wonderful. And Joe Biden is a hero for stepping down,
01:18:53.320
ignoring the fact that if Joe Biden had been leading by five, he never would have stepped
01:18:55.920
down. It wouldn't matter how senior he was. Right. I did say a few more than a few days ago,
01:19:01.140
I guess. So, guys, I know it's fun, but we need to stop making jokes about how Biden's brain is
01:19:06.740
putting until August 18th. Then you can make all the jokes again. But we need to wait until he's
01:19:11.600
formally the nominee. So now we got a new nominee. Ben, I will let you get back to it and then
01:19:16.280
everyone will see your show later. Thank you for coming on. We've got Harmeet Dillon. Harmeet Dillon
01:19:22.060
from the Republican National Committee will be coming on very soon. I don't think we have her yet,
01:19:27.020
but we've got we've got a lot more coming out. The the endorsements keep coming in.
01:19:34.360
Now, people are, you know, trying to get to know the woman who will very likely be the nominee of the
01:19:40.560
Democrat Party for the next three months. In case you're not familiar with Kamala Harris,
01:19:46.880
in case you're in case you're burdened by what we have been, you know, and you and you can't you
01:19:54.760
can't see what what we could be. Well, here here's just a little glimpse at Kamala.
01:19:58.800
What can be unburdened by what has been? What can be unburdened by what has been? What we can see,
01:20:19.180
be what we believe can be unburdened by what has been? What can be unburdened by what has been?
01:20:25.500
What can be unburdened by what has been? What can be unburdened by what has been? What can be
01:20:33.480
unburdened by what has been? What can be unburdened by what has been? Who we can be
01:20:37.140
unburdened by who we have been? What can be unburdened by what has been? Where we can be
01:20:44.400
unburdened by where we have been and unburdened by where we are right now? What can be
01:21:13.140
We have Professor Jacobs sneaking into my studio
01:21:25.080
Obama's statement on Joe Biden dropping out of the 2024 race
01:21:30.320
Is significantly longer than Joe Biden's statement
01:21:51.180
Former Vice Chairman of the California Republican Party
01:22:14.080
Dems have clearly been trying to push Biden out
01:23:17.560
Earlier than the Democratic National Convention